“Well! the scoundrels have bought the Hôtel Duvillard. I'm hemmed in on all sides!” He was waving his long arms about, in a burst of fury which made his white mane stand up on end. “A regular mixed-up affair,” resumed the old man. “It appears that the hôtel belonged to the Crédit Immobilier, the president of which, Baron Hartmann, has just sold it to our famous Mouret. Now they've got me on the right, on the left, and at the back, just in the way I'm holding the knob of this stick in my hand!” It was true, the sale was to have been concluded the previous day. Bourras's small house, hemmed in between The Ladies' Paradise and the Hôtel Duvillard, hanging on like a swallow's nest in a crack of a wall, seemed sure to be crushed, as soon as the shop invaded the hôtel, and the time had now arrived. The colossus had turned the feeble obstacle, and was surrounding it with a pile of goods, threatening to swallow it up, to absorb it by the sole force of its giant aspiration. Bourras could feel the embrace which was making his shop creak. He thought he could see the place getting smaller; he was afraid of being absorbed himself, of being carried to the other side with his umbrellas and sticks, so loudly was the terrible machine roaring just then. “Do you hear them?” asked he. “One would think they were eating up the walls even! And in my cellar, in the attic, everywhere, there's the same noise as of a saw going through the plaster. Never mind! I don't fancy they'll flatten me out like a sheet of paper. I'll stick here, even if they blow up my roof, and the rain should fall in bucketfuls on my bed!” It was just at this moment that Mouret caused fresh proposals to be made to Bourras; they would increase the figure, they would give him fifty thousand francs for his good-will and the remainder of the lease. This offer redoubled the old man's anger; he refused in an insulting manner. How these scoundrels must rob people to be able to pay fifty thousand francs for a thing not worth ten thousand. And he defended his shop as a young girl defends her virtue, for honour's sake.